This time, an ad that actually promotes ONT: Opinion

We criticized the first newspaper ad in Los Angeles World Airports’ campaign to promote L.A./Ontario International Airport — because it was written more to defend LAWA’s management of the ONT than to promote the use of the airport to potential passengers.

So it’s only fair that we give the current ad in the campaign a thumbs-up.

This ad — seen today and Monday in the Daily Bulletin — doesn’t even mention LAWA. It’s all about marketing ONT, as it should be. (And so is www.FlyOntario.com on LAWA’s website.)

Of course, those who’ve been watching ONT for a while remember a day when the airport had 36 nonstop destinations and when Southwest Airlines alone based 56 daily flights there. But that’s before passenger traffic plunged 40 percent or so, and is still dropping.

There’s an interesting chart showing all 14 nonstop destinations from ONT and that the average fare from “Ontario Beats Burbank and/or Orange County” for 13 of those cities — all but Sacramento.

Shown in the chart but not highlighted is that flying from LAX is cheaper than from ONT for 10 of those 14 cities — all but Houston, Portland, San Jose and Seattle. And, of course, there are so many more flights per day to those locations from LAX than from ONT.

To put ONT on the road to recovery, it has to regain a critical mass of enough flights and good connections, and have competitive enough pricing, to attract more passengers. If this ad and those that follow can help a bit, that’s great. But it will require more than ads to turn ONT around.